Developments in computer audio technologies
and systems have continued at a hectic pace throughout this year,
and there appears to be no sign of a slowdown in the foreseeable
future. Meanwhile, the major rollout of DVD players and discs
originally scheduled for this month has been delayed until
November or December, with some companies holding their
introductions until next spring. In this issue we'll outline the
latest DVD introduction plans and discuss recent uses of Dolby
technologies in the computer market.

DVD Update
Will DVD players and discs be on store shelves by this Christmas?
The answer is a definite maybe. As the end of the year
approaches, some of the major hardware manufacturers have revised
their rollout plans and are now targeting spring of 1997 for
their DVD introductions. Why the delay? On a technical level,
several companies are ready to mass produce players and discs,
but the discussions of copy protection and regional coding issues
have taken longer than expected. This has caused both Sony and
Philips to announce that they will delay their DVD introductions
until next spring, with their first products expected to be
available in March.. Meanwhile, Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer, and
Toshiba have announced that they will move ahead with plans to
introduce players this year.

DVD Players
Matsushita has announced that it will launch DVD players in Japan
in November of this year, with a US release a few weeks later.
The Japanese players are expected to be priced at around 70,000
yen (about $650). In a separate statement, Panasonic announced
plans for a February launch of DVD players in Germany. Matsushita
has presented three DVD systems to the press, a basic DVD player
priced at around $739 for the Japanese market, a step-up model
with a Dolby Digital surround sound decoder for around $900, and
a 28-inch 16:9 aspect-ratio wide screen TV/DVD-player combo that
will be priced at about $2,400. Matsushita plans to initially
make 30,000 DVD players and 10,000 combo TV/DVD products a month,
and they expect about 50 DVD movie titles to be available by year
end.

Toshiba also plans to introduce DVD players in Japan in early
November, and has announced plans to release a PC with an
internal DVD ROM drive by the end of the year.

Pioneer has announced that it will launch four DVD players in
Japan in November and December with prices starting at 83,000 yen
(about $755) for the basic player, the DV-7. The first model is
planned to be available in Japan on November 22, with an initial
production of 4,000 units per month. The top-of-line model, the
DVK-1000 DVD/laserdisc karaoke combo, will be introduced in early
December at 248,000 yen (about $2,250). In addition to these
models, Pioneer also plans to ship the first DVD players to the
US in December of this year. Pioneer has estimated that the
industry will sell 400,000 DVD players worldwide in first 12
months, with sales of 11 million units possible by the year 2000.
They have also estimated potential worldwide sales of 500,000 DVD
ROM drives in first year, growing to 54 million drives in the
year 2000.

DVD Discs
Most of the major movie companies have been quiet recently about
their plans to release DVD titles, and major announcements are
not expected until the copyright issues are finalized. In the
meantime, CD replicators have been preparing for full scale DVD
production

The Warner Advanced Media Operations replication plant in
Olyphant, PA, is reportedly "running large orders" of
discs which are not encrypted with copy protection. Nimbus CD
International, in Charlottesville, VA, has started pilot
production of DVD discs and expects to produce discs for sale
this fall. Nimbus expects to initially produce about 20,000 DVD
discs per day. Matsushita has announced that it will begin
producing DVD discs at JVC Disc America plants in Sacramento, CA,
and Tuscaloosa, AL. JVC Disc America began accepting DVD orders
in September and expects to begin sample shipments in November.
Full scale production will begin in April of 1997, with initial
production expected to be 600,000 discs per month. Pioneer Video
Manufacturing in Carson, CA, is scheduled to receive the hardware
necessary for reading copy protected DVDs on October 15, and
should be able to begin DVD production soon after that date.

Dolby Surround for Multimedia
Developments in computer audio have continued at a rapid pace
over the past few months. Several companies have announced new
Dolby Surround and Dolby Digital products for computers and a new
system for Internet audio, called Dolby Net, has made it's debut.
Many of these new developments were announced and demonstrated at
the recent Interactive Multimedia Association (IMA) show in New
York.

Dolby Surround CD ROMs and Video Games
The production of Dolby Surround multimedia titles will receive a
boost this November, when Avid Technology will begin selling
Dolby Surround encoder and decoder TDM Plug-Ins for Digidesign
Pro Tools workstations. The availability of Dolby Surround
encoding on a workstation is expected to simplify the surround
mixing process for multimedia producers by eliminating the need
for an outboard hardware encoder. Dolby is currently talking to
other companies about including Dolby Surround encoding in other
audio editing and production software packages.

Several new CD ROMs and video games have been produced in Dolby
Surround in recent months, and there are now more than 35 titles
available for a variety of platforms. NovaLogic recently released
their first Dolby Surround CD ROM, F-22 Lightning II, while
Electronic Arts has added Soviet Strike to their catalog of Dolby
Surround video games. The latest list of Dolby Surround CD ROMs
and video games is included below.

Developer

Game

Platform

Argonaut UK/Jaleco

King Arthur's World

Super Nintendo

Electronic Arts

Shockwave

3DO

Shockwave II Beyond the Gate

3DO

Shockwave Operation JumpGate

3DO

FIFA International Soccer

3DO

FIFA 96

Sony PlayStation

PGA Tour 96

3DO

Foes of Ali

3DO

Road Rash

3DO

Wing Commander III

3DO/PlayStation

Wing Commander IV

CD-ROM

Need For Speed

3DO/PlayStation

Star Wars Rebel Assault

3DO

Soviet Strike

PlayStation

Europress Software

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

CD-ROM

Peter Pan

CD-ROM

Tom Sawyer

CD-ROM

Treasure Island

CD-ROM

Hunchback of Notre Dame

CD-ROM

Interplay Productions

Descent II

CD-ROM

NovaLogic

F-22 Lightning II

CD-ROM

Ocean Software

Jurassic Park I & II

Super Nintendo

Flintstones

Super Nintendo

Dreadnought

Saturn/Sony PlayStation/PC

Silver

Saturn/Sony PlayStation/PC

Zoiks

Saturn/Sony PlayStation/PC

Prolific Publishing

Return Fire

Psygnosis

Lemmings 3D

Sony PlayStation/CD-ROM

Mickey Mania

Sony PlayStation

Sentient

Sony PlayStation

Assault Rigs

Sony Playstation

F1

Playstation/CD-ROM

Krazy Ivan

Sony PlayStation

Virgin Interactive

New game, unreleased

CD-ROM

Voyager

Spinal Tap

CD-ROM

Seven

CD-ROM

Dolby Surround Multimedia
Aureal Semiconductor has introduced a new IC designed for Dolby
Surround Multimedia products. Called the VSP901 Virtual Surround
Processor, the IC enables playback of Dolby Surround encoded
soundtracks using only a single pair of speakers. The VSP901
contains a Dolby Pro Logic decoder, which extracts the four
channels from the Dolby Surround soundtrack, plus Aureal 3D (A3D)
surround processing which creates a "virtual surround"
effect using just two speakers. The IC can be built into a
computer monitor with speakers, contained in add-on speakers, or
included on a plug-in sound card. VSP901 evaluation boards are
currently available, and sample ICs will be available in the
fourth quarter of this year. The Aureal A3D process joins other
virtual surround processes by Matsushita and JVC which have been
approved by Dolby for use in Dolby Surround Multimedia products.

Dolby Digital for Multimedia
With the upcoming introduction of DVD, companies are working
quickly to bring products to market which can take advantage of
the high quality MPEG-2 video and Dolby Digital audio that the
format will offer. Significant computing power will be required
to decode the compressed video and audio, so a variety of
decoding options will be required. For existing 486 and slower
Pentium machines, add-on decoding hardware will typically be
required, especially for the processor-intensive video
decompression. This will most likely come in the form of a
plug-in video card which will perform the MPEG-2 video decoding.
It is likely that DVD plug-in cards will be offered which will
handle both the video and audio decoding, thus freeing the CPU
for other tasks. For fast Pentiums and new MMX-equipped machines
it will be possible to perform software decoding of both video
and audio on the main CPU without additional hardware.

Dolby Digital Decoding Hardware
Altec Lansing, makers of the first Dolby Surround Multimedia
speaker systems, have announced that they plan to bring their
first Dolby Digital (AC-3) speaker system to market in the first
quarter of 1997. Priced at about $500, the system will be
designed for use with PCs and will include six speakers; left,
center and right satellite speakers, two wireless surround
speakers, plus a subwoofer. Altec also plans to introduce a
high-end model with a 12-inch subwoofer, priced under $1,000,
later in the year. These systems will allow computer users to
enjoy full multichannel surround sound from DVD movies, DVD ROMs,
and other Dolby Digital sources. The systems will include the new
Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface, which will allow continuous
real time streaming of digital audio from USB-equipped computers.
This will make Altec Lansing the first company to produce
USB-equipped computer speakers. In addition, the systems will
include software which will provide on-screen user controls.

Dolby Digital Decoding Software
As computers become more and more powerful and 100+ MHz Pentium
processors become standard equipment, it will be possible to run
powerful audio processing algorithms on the computer's main CPU.
This trend is already well underway as evidenced by CompCore
Multimedia's recent announcement of SoundPEG-2, a software-based
Dolby Digital decoder for PCs. This software can be used with
CompCore's MPEG-2 video decoder software for the playback of DVD
movies and DVD ROMs. SoundPEG-2 supports full 5.1 channel Dolby
Digital decoding and is compatible with existing PC sound cards.
When used with a sound card which offers only two channel stereo
output, SoundPEG-2 decodes the 5.1 channel Dolby Digital
soundtrack and down-mixes it to a two channel Dolby Surround
soundtrack. This allows the user to listen in normal stereo, or
use an add-on Dolby Surround Pro Logic or Dolby Surround
Multimedia decoder for surround sound without the need to buy a
new sound card. SoundPEG-2 will run on most current PCs,
including the Intel 486 and Pentium processors. Decoding a 5.1
channel Dolby Digital soundtrack on a 100 MHz Pentium processor
uses approximately 35% of the CPU, while the same decoding on a
200 MHz Pentium (a P55C), requires only about 17% of the CPU.
SoundPEG-2 software developer kits are now available for OEM
developers from CompCore, and ActiveMovie versions of SoundPEG-2
will be available later this year.

SoundPEG-2 will be used in CompCore's SoftDVD, a complete
software package which will allow PCs to play DVD movies and DVD
ROMs. SoftDVD will be available in two configurations; an
all-software version, and a combination software and hardware
version. The all-software version requires an Intel MMX processor
and performs all Dolby Digital audio decoding and MPEG-2 video
decoding without additional hardware. It is expected to be
available in the first quarter of 1997. The combination software
and hardware version of SoftDVD takes advantage of dedicated
MPEG-2 video decoding ICs, and can run on any Pentium processor.
It can also be used in combination with dedicated Dolby Digital
decoding ICs.

DVD Decoding Card for PCs
Zoran Corp., the world's leading supplier of Dolby Digital ICs,
has announced the availability of the Zoran DVD4PC reference
design board. This board will enable many OEM and PC
manufacturers to significantly shorten the development time of
their DVD products. Zoran are currently working with many of the
leading PC manufacturers and OEMs, and several companies are
expected to announce DVD-ready PCs and products in the near
future. The DVD4PC reference design board includes Dolby Digital
decoding, a PCI multimedia controller, Windows 95/Windows 3.1
software drivers, and an MPEG-2 video decoder on a single PCI
card. The DVD4PC design can include two different Zoran ICs for
Dolby Surround decoding; the Zoran ZR38521 for two-channel sound,
or the ZR38500 for 5.1 channel Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic.
The board uses Zoran's ZR36120 PCI controller to integrate the
audio and MPEG-2 video functions on one plug-in board.

Dolby Digital on the Internet
Liquid Audio, a relatively new company formed by veterans of the
music industry and professional recording engineers, has
developed a unique system which will allow customers to preview
and purchase CD-quality music over the Internet. In addition to
previewing music in real time, users will be able to purchase and
download musical selections using Dolby Digital coding. The
system integrates copyright control features and automatically
logs purchases so that royalty payments to record companies,
publishers, and artists can be easily tracked. It is expected
that the system will support CD-R recording in early 1997, so
that users can easily record their own compact discs of purchased
musical selections. The audio encoding and mastering software,
called Liquifier, will be available around November 15 at a cost
of $300. The server software will start at $200 for a single
stream and will decrease to $100 per stream for higher
quantities. The system will first be available for listening on
November 1 on Music Boulevard.

Dolby Net
There has been much interest over the past year in real time,
streaming audio over the Internet using 28.8 kbps modems. Systems
which provide this capability, such as Progressive Network's
RealAudio, have been introduced and are now being widely used in
the market. As we have discussed in previous issues, the Dolby
Digital AC-3 coding system can operate at a variety of data
rates, and there has been significant interest in developing a
version of Dolby Digital which could be used for this
application. After months of intense development effort Dolby has
introduced Dolby Net, a special low bit rate version of Dolby
Digital which provides high quality stereo audio in real time
over the Internet. This technology recently made its debut in the
form of Progressive Network's RealAudio System 3.0, which uses
Dolby Net to deliver stereo sound over 28.8 kbps modems and
near-CD-quality sound over ISDN and LAN connections. RealAudio
3.0 is now available from Progressive Networks' Web site at www.realaudio.com. More than 40 companies are currently planning to
offer program material utilizing RealAudio 3.0, including major
record labels Sony, Warner Bros., Polygram, BMG and MCA, Internet
music sites including AudioNet, SonicNet and ENSO/Muzak, radio
networks Evergreen and Infinity, and national broadcasting
companies including CBS Radio, NBC, ABC and the Canadian
Broadcasting Corp. (CBC). On September 17, CBC became the first
national public broadcasting company to use RealAudio 3.0, with
the first stereo Internet broadcasts beginning around the first
of October.

The audio quality of Dolby Net was recently tested at Seattle's
KING-FM 98.1, where a RealAudio 3.0 signal taken directly from
the Internet was broadcast over the air. Peter Newman, general
manager and program director at KING-FM, stated "Our
audience consists mainly of experienced classical music listeners
who demand the best in audio quality. Our listeners couldn't tell
the difference!" The music used in the test was encoded
using the ISDN-rate encoder, and played back from a RealAudio
server located at Progressive Networks.

The Interactive Multimedia Association (IMA) Show
Dolby Laboratories recently took advantage of the first IMA trade
show, held at Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York,
September 17-19, to showcase the many uses of Dolby technologies
in the computer marketplace. Dolby's demonstrations included a
DVD disc of movie clips with Dolby Digital soundtracks played
back in a Toshiba DVD player and in an Intel PC equipped with a
DVD ROM drive. The movie clips were played back through a
state-of-the-art home theater system, and illustrated the fact
that DVD will bring a new level of audio and video performance to
the computer world. Other demonstrations included Dolby Surround
CD ROMs played back using Dolby Pro Logic decoding in a home
theater system, and Dolby Surround Multimedia decoding with
Aureal's A3D process providing virtual surround over two
speakers. Additional demonstrations included new Dolby Surround
CD ROMs and video games from NovaLogic and Electronic Arts, Dolby
Surround Pro Logic and Dolby Surround Multimedia speaker systems
from Altec Lansing, and the Dolby Surround encoder and decoder
Plug-Ins for the Digidesign Pro Tools system.

Other companies also demonstrated systems using Dolby
technologies at the show, including Progressive Networks, who
demonstrated their new RealAudio 3.0 system using Dolby Net, and
Sonic Solutions, who demonstrated their DVD Creator DVD mastering
system. Sonic Solutions recently announced that Apple and IBM
have joined the DVD Production Alliance and will begin work on
the first generation of DVD-ROMs using the DVD premastering
system developed by Sonic Solutions and Daikin Industries.
CompCore also demonstrated their SoundPEG-2 Dolby Digital
decoding system at the show, using a PC and a full five speaker
surround system.

Dolby Literature
If you would like to read more about any of Dolby's technologies
there are a variety of publications available. Many of these are
available on our Web site at http://www.dolby.com, and we encourage interested readers to visit our
Web site for further information. Dolby literature may also be
requested by sending an e-mail message to [email protected] or by leaving a voice message on Dolby's Literature
Hotline at 415-558-0344. Please be sure to include your name and
mailing address in your message and specify which technologies
you are interested in.